The Singing Detective
Dennis Potter's serial, in which a hospitalised writer's hallucinations arrive as 1940s dance numbers — and the titles set that up without explaining it.
The Singing Detective opens with a main title sequence of 49 seconds.
It arrived on BBC One in 1986, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and This Is Your Life were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
49sThe opening.
More drama opening titles from the 1980s
2 sequences
EastEnders
An aerial pull-back over the Thames and the drum that answers it — thirty-two seconds that have barely changed in forty years.
- Season 1
- Season 41
1 sequenceBaywatch
Los Angeles County lifeguards, and at its peak the most-watched television programme on Earth.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLonesome Dove
Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Neighbours
Ramsay Street across forty years, and a theme song that survived every cast, network and cancellation.
- Season 1
- Season 39
2 sequences
The Bold and the Beautiful
Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.
- Season 1
- Season 38
1 sequenceKnight Rider
A narrated premise, a scanning red light and a synth arpeggio — the most efficient piece of eighties television branding after the A-Team's.
- Season 1